I’ve seen this brought up countless times, and how do you intend to design such a thing without screwing the melee with the mobs running everywhere or having the designers create mechanics that pretty much screws the existing way the other 6 tank specs work by being melee tanks?
Here’s how all the games that have ranged tanks make it work: bosses and mobs still run up and melee you. It’s just that all your abilities are ranged. You can’t make it work any other way. And when you’re an outright Mage-like caster, like Evoker? That would be silly. It can slide if you’re a bounty hunter without looking and feeling ridiculous, but it wouldn’t work at all for Evoker.
The ranged tank spec isn’t what I’m proposing for Evoker. Evoker would and should be a melee style tank. I’m no class designer, nor would this thread be the right place to talk about it since I mentioned such a spec would be for Warlock and maybe Mage.
Without going too much into detail, since I’d still need time to brainstorm, I’ll give a very brief Warlock concept. The Warlock would stay at ranged and have their Voidwalker up close in melee tanking the boss. They’d have abilities that interact with and support the Voidwalker. Really the only complicated aspect of such a spec is how movement would work. You could make it so passively the Warlock’s abilities will naturally make mobs threat onto the Voidwalker and the Voidwalker would just be set to follow. During encounters, you could use the movement ability to direct them to where to go during mechanics. Other options could be having separate movement keybinds that move the Voidwalker, or an ability that lets you Mind Vision the Voidwalker and control them temporarily.
It wouldn’t be a beginner/noob friendly spec, but we are already getting a new class that is advertised as not being beginner/noob friendly. So applying that skill requirement to a spec isn’t an issue.
Again though, this isn’t the thread for such a discussion. I will gladly make a Warlock Tank spec thread in the future though, since that is also a fantasy I’ve wanted too. I’d prefer we stick to talking about Evoker in this particular thread.
You make it such a thread when you blindly toss out “A ranged style tank spec” without actually thinking about how that will work.
Ok, then the pet needs to not only be susceptible to melee and spell attacks, but it would also need to be susceptible to ground effects and AoE effects that it presently is not.
So now you’ve overcomplicated the melee players because how any ability that is going to target ranged now becomes a problem for both the warlock and the melee and any attack that normally targets melee becomes a problem for the Warlock.
Except that puts you in danger of ranged abilities and effects that when you die, the voidwalker dies and you have no tank.
I definitely agree with this but I also think there are pitfalls with designing such a spec that just goes against how most if not all encounters are designed.
OK, we’ll solely focus on a melee tank spec for Evoker then.
In my opinion, Evoker shouldn’t be added at all until they fix the innate problems of the other ranged and healer specializations first. In addition, no other tank spec needs to be added until they actually address the toolkit and design issues that surround the existing 6 tank specializations as well.
How would a ranged tank work?
(looks at Orisa, D va, Zarya, Sigma)
Idk… kind of like that?
I disagree with your assessment. I think they should give every class an option to heal and tank along with their current specs.
That said I wouldn’t do it all at once. Balance is a concern of course.
In the case of Evoker, the fantasy it and it’s associated race the Dracthyr are trying to provide is missing an entire side of that fantasy. A tank spec, especially a melee one, would greatly alleviate that. I do think Blizzard could figure out a ranged option for tanking though. Even if it had to be something as entertaining as using the Dracthyr’s already exemplary enemy movement control options to move them around and away.
I will admit though the way Blizzard does bosses pigeon holes them into only having melee tanks at the moment and its hard to find a work around.
Lore’s version of using the Voidwalker is very similar to a concept I came up with for the Necromancer classes Tank spec where you use a large undead as the tank, while your abilities mostly control that pets movement and defenses along with some abilities that summon additional support undead that work to temporarily split damage increase cleave and taunting for the pet. Effectively you end up with a hybrid melee/ranged tank spec, where the player is mostly controlling things from afar while the tanking occurs with the pet. (Caster and Pet share a health pool.)
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Some people prefer not to have multiple characters, and I for one would prefer to play a tank on my upcoming Evoker main rather than need an alt.
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I think Blizzard needs to take a bit of inspiration from ESO. the classes of course still need refinement, but the classes can be customized far more than wow. such what armor you can wear what weapons you can use and whether you can heal tank or dps.
A dragon that can’t tank is going to b the new meme next expansion 
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They also said if there is one that gets added, it’d also be DPS.
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That was not a set in stone response.
In multiple interviews, it was back and for on whether the 3rd spec would be dps or tank.
So there is absolutely no reason to believe that tank is off the table.
Looks like Evoker is getting a bloodlust in the next alpha build
Keep up the good work and I hope to see a tank build in the future as well
Not necessarily in Dragonflight mind you, I can wait until 11.0 if that’s what it takes.
Friendly reminder that giving Evoker a tank spec would make me tank, helping the tank shortage by 1 which is better than 0. Likely more than 1 given the unique class fantasy Evoker tank would provide which could very likely entice others to try tanking.
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I’d love to have another tank class to play with. Especially one I’m so far vibing with rather well.
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Dragon and Tank go so well together, it’s crazy this mistake even happened.
Hopefully it will be resolved in the future, when new specs are inevitably added to the classes.
Still one of the things I really want to see in DF is a nice tank spec added to the Evoker.
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Just want to toss this out there: I am extremely pleased they said they’d go in the direction of melee DPS instead of tank. There’s already too many tank specs (objectively; Ion and Co even commented on it, and it’s a notable balance problem in the high end).
Annihilation as a black dragon and twilight/chromatic focused melee spec feels like it writes itself, and given the story threads on the Beta/Alpha so far I am extremely hopeful that’s the route they go.
Well thats just wrong.
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